I was chatting with a friend today and he mentioned that he had been taught how Christians tend to go through stages of evangelism as they mature spiritually. First the emphasis is on words and wanting to tell people about Jesus. Then they find they realise evangelism is more than words and trying to convert people so they also focus on helping people in practical ways. Eventually they realise the profound impact of even just being a silent presence with someone in a need, or a visible presence in a community.
These stages echo a similar pattern I see that we go through in prayer:
First we see prayer as mainly about words and talking. We then also realise the importance of listening and giving God a chance to speak to us! Intercession at first takes the form of listing specific requests to God.
Our prayer lives then urge us to leave our rooms or church buildings to put our prayer into action. We realise we can't pray and not do something about our faith and our prayers and our love for God. Even the way we view intercession changes and we see the connection between praying for people and situations, and offering ourselves to God to be part of the answer to those prayers.
Then later on there comes a depth of stillness and simple presence about our prayer lives. We feel led into ways of sitting with God that don't involve any words or thoughts or even trying to hear what God is saying. It's more like two people in love simply enjoying each other's company. And even our intercession becomes simplified somehow. We realise that intercession doesn't necessarily need great detail, that we can just hold someone in prayer at a place deeper than words, or bring them to God in prayer like the four friends brought the paralyzed man to Jesus and simply laid him at his feet in expectant faith.
